Status
Available
Publication
French and European Publications Inc (2005), Edition: GALLIMARD, 128 pages
Description
"In this rare glimpse into the life of Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano, the author takes up his pen to tell his personal story. He addresses his early years--shadowy times in postwar Paris that haunt his memory and have inspired his world-cherished body of fiction. In the spare, absorbing, and sometimes dreamlike prose that translator Mark Polizzotti captures unerringly, Modiano offers a memoir of his first twenty-one years. Termed one of his "finest books" by the Guardian, Pedigree is both a personal exploration and a luminous portrait of a world gone by."--Jacket flap.
User reviews
LibraryThing member SigmundFraud
Pedigree: A Memoir by Patrick Modiano is one of several translations of his works since he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Pedigree is a terse naming of parts yet somehow it held my interest when you think it shouldn't. Perhaps his terrible youth was compelling. Neglected by both parents over
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two decades he somehow survived and did well. This is a story of survival against the odds. It is a short read and worth the detour. Show Less
LibraryThing member kidzdoc
This brief memoir by Modiano, the most recent recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, concerns the first 21 years of his life, after he was born to an indifferent Flemish actress and a ne'er-do-well Jewish man in Paris who met during the Occupation. He was the unmarried couple's only surviving
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child, and he was passed on to relatives and friends like an unwanted pet for most of his early years. Although his parents appear to be colorful, if irresponsible, characters and his childhood would seem to have been a chaotically unique and potentially interesting one, Modiano chooses to list the people that entered and exited his life in a droll chronological matter, without analysis or reflection, as if he was filling out a lengthy school entrance or government form about his past, which made this book a mind numbingly dull read. Fortunately it was a short book, but it was worth about 1/100th of the $25 I paid for it. Show Less
LibraryThing member stillatim
Are you new to Modiano? Because this is tedious in the extreme: a list of names, streets, and very occasional events, which would be of interest had I read most of his other work, but having read only a few novellas before this one, is of very little interest at all. Which is to say: don't start
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here. Start, but don't start here. Show Less
Language
Original language
French
Original publication date
2015 (English translation)
2004
Physical description
128 p.; 8.66 inches
ISBN
2070773337 / 9782070773336